


A Winter Wish For Those Long Gone

by HollowMachines



Category: Dunkirk (2017)
Genre: Fluff and Angst, Light Angst, M/M, holiday season but no holiday cheer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-23
Updated: 2019-12-23
Packaged: 2021-02-25 06:14:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,239
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21911305
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HollowMachines/pseuds/HollowMachines
Summary: The season used to be kind. Now it only brings back memories.
Relationships: Collins & Farrier (Dunkirk), Collins/Farrier (Dunkirk)
Comments: 8
Kudos: 16
Collections: 'Holidays'





	A Winter Wish For Those Long Gone

**Author's Note:**

> I've never found a prompt I couldn't make into something kind of sad, so... sorry

December 24th.

It’s been half a year.

He ponders that realization as he wanders aimlessly around the aerodrome like a ghost, swallowed by the misty darkness. A year ago had been Christmas, and here it was again, a more complicated and lonely affair than before. So much can change in a year. In six months. In an instant.

When he goes up into the sky, he fires with deadly accuracy and flies like a man possessed by purpose. When he comes down he laughs with the boys and spends his time forgetting. There’s a war to be fought, after all. The skies over England have been so busy he hasn’t had much time to think about anything but surviving.

But now it’s Christmas again.

He has to be up at first light tomorrow. He should be tucked in bed, ignoring drunkenly sung Christmas songs by his mates and nursing his own headache. But he can’t be in that room right now, not tonight, not while staring across the room where _he_ used to sleep. Those memories still echo in the walls, in the faint smells and the little photographs Collins keeps tucked safe under his bunk. Like shrapnel embedded in his mind.

It’s bitterly cold tonight - his breath is a dense fog in the air before him and his cheeks are stinging and red. In the distance, searchlights draw lines across the sky and the heavy hanging clouds. But it’s by the moonlight that he can watch the subtle tremor of his fingers as he fumbles with the lighter in his hands. The metal glitters with an intricate pattern of gold embossing, and Collins still laughs at it on occasion.

It’s not his style. But it _is_ Farrier’s.

The lighter burns cold in his hands, and Collins pulls out a cigarette and slips it between his chapped lips. With a click a flame flickers to life, dancing wildly in the cold wind, and it takes a while to catch light with the way his own hands tremble. It’s a hypnotic illumination that draws his mind back to simpler days.

  
Farrier would often offer him a light, since Collins always seemed to be misplacing his own. He would pat down his pockets and groan until Farrier inevitably ended up pulling out his lighter. After a while, Collins could just as easily slip his hand in Farrier’s breast pocket and pluck the lighter from it without so much as a word between them.

Then sometimes, in more private moments, Farrier would get a hand on the back of his neck, pull in close with barely a breath between them and meet the tip of Collins’ unlit cigarette with the burning embers of his own. Fingers would tease the blond strands of his hair, the dim light illuminating a sort of intensity in Farrier’s eyes that could bring Collins’ heart thundering up into his throat. That was the start of a great many things.

Then one day, Collins had found it on his person. He never did find out when Farrier had slipped it into his pocket, and then that night as they lay curled together in the silence of their room, hidden away from the war and prying eyes, Farrier had told him to keep it. A gift, perhaps. Collins, of course, argued he had nothing to give in return. But then Farrier took his face between warm, gentle hands, and in the space between their lips had declared he already had everything he wanted.

It’s been half a year.

Collins drops the lighter and pulls the cigarette free, blowing out a long plume of smoke until his empty lungs start to burn. He presses the frozen back of his hand over his mouth as he bites down against the lump in his throat, trying to stop the cold sting of tears.

Frigid winter air bites at every inch of his body and tremors wracking him down to the bone. But still he stands, hair blown down in his eyes, ears and nose and fingers going numb, the light layer of snow they’d had the night before turning to frosted slush under his boots.

He’s not sure why he’s waiting here; why he’d come out at all. Any other day he’d happily be down at the pub with the lads, drinking himself into an early grave when the memories start to overwhelm; drowning himself in a way the water never could.

But not tonight.

He glances down at his watch through the fogged up glass. The fingers tick over. It’s midnight. Christmas.

Ah, of course, that’s why; a memory.

It was last year, just after the squadron had come back from a dance hall in town. Farrier had taken Collins’ hand and pulled them into a secluded spot, into a heated moment all their own. Hidden by the uncompromising darkness in a quiet hollow they’d held each other, Farrier humming a slow, melancholic tune and lazily swaying in each other’s arms. Then as the eve ticked over to the day, he pressed in closer still, cold lips to Collins’ ear, his breath burning, and murmured,

“Happy Christmas, Collins.”

It was that moment, perhaps more than most others, that reminded Collins how sentimental Farrier could be if he allowed himself a moment to let go. That night as Collins lay under him, with feverish skin and roaming hands and ecstasy clouding his thoughts, he promised he’d cherish that moment like a precious heirloom. For an instant the war was a far off thing, and they could pretend their nature wasn’t so wrong.

It’s been half a year.

They’d never told each other how they felt in so many words. Collins had known it would have to remain an unspoken truth between them. But his heart silently sings the words now, like a Christmas hymn that could reach across the channel to the man he wants so desperately to hear it. He doesn’t remember being so sappy, but maybe he’s just that tired, that lonely. Maybe he just knows what he wants, and knows he can’t have it.

A few tears slip down his cheeks and he hastily wipes a thumb under his eyes before taking another drag of his cigarette. Just for a moment the world stops. The wind is nothing but a cold caress, a poor imitation of a warmer, more tender touch. He exhales, expelling the warmth from his chest before raising his hand to the sky, the embers a faint glow in an impenetrable darkness.

It should be enough to know Farrier’s alive; the message had come a couple weeks ago, like an early present in and of itself. It’s not enough though, and it won’t be enough until they can both walk out the other side of this nightmare, stop playing at heroism and just be; whatever that means for them.

Idealistic though it may be, he clings to that hope like a lifeline.

It’s been half a year since they’d last seen each other. This solemn remembrance will have to be enough.

When he finally heads back inside an hour later, the lighter still heavy as a memory in his pocket, he pours himself a quiet drink. Then he pours a second, clinks it against his own empty glass, raises it to the sky in a silent toast, and downs that too.

“Merry Christmas, Farrier.”

Somewhere in Europe, he wonders if Farrier is wishing him the same.

**Author's Note:**

> Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to you all!


End file.
